


it's None of your Business

by layersofsilence



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Dragons, Graffiti, Inspired by Art, M/M, Meet-Cute, brief brief sam/t'challa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 03:23:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12202905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/layersofsilence/pseuds/layersofsilence
Summary: “Whatever I want?” Steve asks, mind already racing.Peggy pauses a little, looking doubtful, but Angie jumps in for her. “Whateveryou want,” she promises, with relish. “But make it big and bold. The main problem,” she says knowledgeably, “is that nobody expects dragons to own a building. So, we need to make it very obvious that we do.”or: the one where Steve is commissioned to get some better signage on his Dragon Community Centre, not run into the world's most stupidly improbably attractive man. guess what happens anyway





	it's None of your Business

This was the fifth time this had happened _this week_ , and it was only fucking Thursday. Some blundering human had ignored all the signs next to all the doors – and there were at least three – marking this building and its rooms to be a dragon-designated communal den. Steve is up to his forehead with this human nonsense.

“Whoops, haha,” the intruding human says, shifting uncomfortably under the gaze of many dragons, some of whom are shifted into their draconic form, because they feel comfortable doing that, because they’re inside a dragon-safe area. “Guess I got the wrong door.”

“Guess you got three wrong doors,” Steve mutters, under his breath, because he knows Peggy will kick him out if he starts one more fight with a human too self-entitled to read. “In a row.” Peggy still glares at him, but the human is oblivious, and only stumbles out back the way he came.

“At least it wasn’t a mating ceremony,” Natasha says pragmatically, from beside Steve. “Remember that time some random came in while Sam and T’Challa –”

“I _don’t want to remember_ ,” Steve nearly shouts. T’Challa had nearly beheaded the unfortunate human, and only Sam’s timely intervention had stopped the intruder from ending up crispy.

It wasn’t that Steve disliked humans. He's not one of those boneheaded traditionalists who seem to think that dragon-human integration is the worst thing to ever happen to them, despite the dragon population spike and overall increase in mental health in the generations since they’d made themselves known. There’s a fairly substantial number of humans in the room right now, including Sam, and Steve wouldn’t dream of protesting their presence. It's just that Steve dislikes the particular brand of human who sees the words ‘community centre’ on a charming old building, ignore the ‘dragon’ just above it, and decided to waltz inside and past two other doors that also labelled their rooms as being for dragons and/or their mates to interrupt whatever was happening (in this case, their first-Thursday-of-the-month potluck). When Peggy had started the community centre none of the rooms had been labelled past ‘room 1’. After the T’Challa Incident, Steve and a few others had gotten together enough money to re-label them ‘DRAGON room 1’, but that only seems to have helped very slightly.

“We need to do something about this,” Steve says to Natasha, and she makes a humming noise. By her usual standards and considering that she’s currently in her draconic form, this is enthusiastic agreement.

“Yes _please_ ,” Sam says, approaching from Steve’s other side. “Remember –”

“I remember,” Steve assures him. “How could I forget?”

“I mean, maybe we could hold off until your ceremony,” Sam says. “I’d love to see _your_ reaction to an intruder.”

“It would be the worst reaction,” Steve drops his voice to whisper, and it’s not even a joke. He’s gotten much better at controlling his temper over the years, but he’s still notoriously quick to anger, and he doesn’t think he can be held responsible for getting angry at an intruder at his _mating ceremony_. Honestly, it’s a miracle to him that Sam had been able to get T’Challa to cease and desist in his attempts to flame the intruder, mate or no.

“It would be amazing,” Natasha agrees from Steve’s other side, because she’s a traitor.

“ _Do you want to see me go to jail_ ,” Steve hisses at them, and they both just laugh.

~*~

“Could you come here for a minute, Steve?” Peggy asks at the end of the potluck, when everyone else is starting to filter out of the room. “I couldn’t help but notice your annoyance at the intruder,” she says when he has obediently drawn close, and Steve winces.

“I mean,” he tries to prevaricate, “it’s annoying.” He is terrible at evasion.

“Here,” Peggy says, and gives him a bucket of spray paints. Steve doesn’t even want to know what the expression on his face looks like, because he feels so much delight that he probably looks intensely stupid, but Angie snaps a picture from her position behind Peggy and cackles. Steve tries to growl at her, but he’s too busy clutching the spray paints to him.

“I know how you feel about graffiti,” Peggy says. “But I can’t think of anyone better to get some signage on the centre.”

“Whatever I want?” Steve asks, mind already racing.

Peggy pauses a little, looking doubtful, but Angie jumps in for her. “What _ever_ you want,” she promises, with relish. “But make it big and bold. The main problem,” she says knowledgeably, “is that nobody expects dragons to own a building. So, we need to make it very obvious that we do.”

Steve squeaks with joy and flees with his plunder, although he will never admit to either of those things.

~*~

“I still can’t believe you’re doing graffiti again,” Natasha says from next to Steve, her amusement clear in her voice. “You remember how that went down in the seventies, don’t you?”

The seventies had not been a good time for Steve.

“Of course I do! And this isn’t _graffiti_ ,” he snips, although technically it is. “It’s _signage_.”

Natasha just laughs unsympathetically. Steve has no idea why he wanted her to come along, except for the fact that he actually hadn’t asked because he knew it’d subject him to this kind of merciless heckling. Natasha had just invited herself along, as she tended to do, and because it’s the asscrack of dawn and fucking cold, well, company’s welcome, even terrible company. Also, Steve has to admit that Natasha is a lot more intimidating than him, and probably more capable of getting him out of trouble if someone shows up and accuses him of vandalism.

The first press downwards, the hiss as the paint is released, it’s a heady feeling. It only gets better as Steve moves his hand in long, graceful motions, and the shape he wants begins to unfurl, starkly black against the reddish brickwork of the building.

It is, fairly obviously, a dragon. Wings spreading and head arched. It looks _wonderful_.

“I know that look,” Natasha says from beside him. “And guess what? This is graffiti. On a wall. You can’t add it to your hoard.”

Steve scowls at her.

“I can’t believe it took you the entire decade in the seventies to figure that out,” she adds, because she’s a terrible dragon who hates Steve.

“Fuck off,” Steve mutters, although he really should have seen from the beginning that a dragon who hoarded art trying his hand at graffiti was never going to be a good idea.

He’d thought it was going to be fun, trying out a new medium, a new kind of canvas, maybe making friends with fellow graffitists who would be painting similarly politically=fuelled messages on public property. Instead all he’d gotten was a series of creations he couldn’t take back to his den and keep safe, a burgeoning acquaintanceship with a group of people who were more interested in profanities than classical art (although, to be fair, their slogans did have a certain charm, and some of them were downright artistic in their creativity), and that sinking feeling of dismay whenever he saw any additions to his work. He didn’t _mind_ additions, necessarily – collaborative sprit of learning, and all – but it would have been nice to have a say in what could and couldn’t be added to his work. He was too possessive of his art, he’d been forced to admit at the tail end of the decade. Graffiti had been a bad choice for him, really.

But this graffiti, well, it was sanctioned graffiti, on a community centre. Nobody was going to draw over it, or if they did it would be quickly erased.

 _DO NOT **MEDDLE**_ , he writes, in neat serif typeface, _in the AFFAIRS OF **DRAGONS**_. He scrawls a small decorative scribble underneath it and steps back.

“Looks good,” Nat observes, crunching on something. And it does look good; the dragon seems to be unfurling itself on the wall, neat lines left bare in between the blocks of paint creating a cohesive flow. It isn’t necessarily Steve’s best work, but then he’s only been working on the design for a week and he’s decidedly rusty with his materials, so he’s going to chalk this up as a win.

“Huh,” a voice says from beside him, and Steve _jumps_ , he’d been so invested in studying his signage. “That’s really good.”

Steve turns to look at the person addressing him, and _fuck_ , the man next to him is so attractive that he starts to blush right away. This kind of good-looking should be illegal, maybe. Or at least something Steve was allowed to be warned of.

“I – uh, I, thanks,” Steve manages to stutter out. He tries to shoot a poisonous glare at Nat for not at least alerting him to the new presence, but she only shrugs. She fucking knows that tall dark and handsome is exactly Steve’s type.

“Can I make an addition?” the guy asks, and his eyes are so blue and bright that it kind of makes Steve weak in the knees. That’s his only defence for nodding, even though it makes Natasha’s eyes light up and a smirk curl at the corner of her mouth.

The guy leans forward, and reaches even further forward to take a can of paint from Steve’s bucket. Steve will never admit to the way his breath comes just a little faster, but it doesn’t go unnoticed if the smiles on both Natasha’s and the anonymous new guy’s faces are anything to go by. 

_because_ , the guy starts to write on the wall, under Steve’s words and curclicue. His handwriting is neat and precise, with rounded edges and slight tails. It’s a stupid thing to be charmed by, but that doesn’t stop Steve. _it’s RUDE_ , the guy finishes with a flourish.

Steve can’t help but laugh, a high, quick thing like it’s been startled out of him, and even Natasha chuckles, low and rich.

“Here, let me –” Steve says, and, just to get even, leans unnecessarily close to get his paint can back.

 _they got STUFF GOING ON_ he writes, and then he relinquishes the can one more time.

 _it’s NONE of your BUSINESS_.

“Was that a Salt-N-Pepa reference?” Steve asks suspiciously, and the guy barks out a laugh, looks from Steve to the wall to Steve again. Somehow he seems to have gotten a lot closer while they’ve been doing this.

“It wasn’t meant to be,” he admits. “But now the song’s stuck in my head, _thanks_ for that.”

“Anytime,” Steve says, grinning his most shit-eating grin as he sticks his hand out. “Steve Rogers.”

“Bucky Barnes,” the graffitist says, shaking it.

“I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” Natasha drawls. There's a pointed kind of emphasis on the last word of the sentence, and Steve can't help but blush at it.

But then, Nat’s right, so he screws up his courage and looks up at Bucky. “Do you maybe,” Steve says, “want to come get breakfast? _Without_ the peanut gallery,” he adds with another glare in Natasha’s direction. She only shrugs and gets her phone out, probably to text every dragon in New York and a few throughout the rest of the world as well.

“Fine by me,” she says.

“Nat,” Steve says plaintively. “It’s only breakfast.”

“That’s hurtful,” Bucky says. “I thought I meant more to you, Steve. My time is worth so much, which is why I’m wasting it by shitposting on graffiti.” Steve flashes a grin up at him, and Bucky smiles down, and the smile makes him even _more_ improbably attractive, it really isn’t fair.

“Have fun, boys,” Natasha says. She makes as if to leave, turns around, snaps a picture of the graffiti – Steve has the sinking feeling that the picture includes him and Bucky as well – and then actually does leave, smoke coming out of her mouth as she actually _whistles_.

“Um,” Bucky says, just as Steve’s phone buzzes in his pocket.

Natasha’s already tagged him in a post on the Brooklyn Dragon’s Community Centre page: _psa: this new signage is absolutely a love letter between Steve and the random next to him. watching them make it was approx. 600x more sickening than the actual photo_. It even has a comment from Sam, which, what is he even doing up right now?

_wHY did you tell me that i go there EVEYR WEEK and now i have to walk past LOVE GRAFFITI_

“Oh my god,” Steve says, and perhaps against his better judgement, tilts the phone to show Bucky. In that moment Natasha types out another comment: _if i have to think about it, so do you_.

“I mean, at least I look good in the picture,” Bucky says with a grin. He does look very good in the picture, with both hands tucked inside his hoodie and a lock of hair falling out of his bun as he looks down at Steve. Unfortunately, Steve is looking with a gaze that is incredibly reflective of that fact, which is to say: he looks exactly as smitten as Nat had claimed he was.

“Those jeans do wonders for your thighs,” Steve says, trying to distract from this fact as he tucks the phone back in his pocket by, apparently, being as _embarrassingly forward as possible_.

“Why thank you,” Bucky says before Steve can bury himself in the concrete, looking down like he’s about to critically evaluate his own legs. “I made them myself. The thighs, not the jeans.” He breaks off to blush, and Steve is a _dragon_ , he’s _sixty_ , fully an adult for a few years now, he has enough dignity and self-restraint to not feel like a schoolboy with a dizzying new crush. Except, apparently, he really doesn’t. “Did you say something about breakfast?”

“I did,” Steve says, and all of a sudden he’s fighting to keep his grin in check. “There’s a good place about three blocks away.” 

“Lead the way,” Bucky says, offering his hand and a blinding grin. Met with its frankly dazzling force, Steve loses the battle with his own smile, so the start of their first walk together is while they’re beaming at each other like lunatics. If Steve believed in omens, it’d signal a happy future; since he doesn’t, he just calls it a good beginning.

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by this artwork:  
> 
> 
> from [this post](http://dragonwriter315.tumblr.com/post/164012546003) on [dragonwriter315.tumblr.com](http://dragonwriter315.tumblr.com)


End file.
